Anyone complaining about the uncharismatic, semi-competent lead should know that she stems from an "aristocratic" German clan, so in a wider sense of the word - yet another nepotist.
There must be thousands of girls her age, all across Northern Europe and the States (because her character is a Norwegian blonde), dying to star in a movie, even a lousy obscure one such as this, but why bother searching for the right girl when you can just cow-tow to the elites by allowing them to take over every (relevant) aspect of production? Or at least the aspects they most care about: stardom for their needy little brats.
This is hardly the first time the blue-bloods and the gazillionaires step in to hand their offspring a movie career (if temporarily, until they no longer get any roles, or when/if they find a new jet-set hobby). This happens far more often than the clueless average cinema-goer even knows (or cares, because clearly most audiences don't have criteria and are quite happy to be served rubbish that involves mediocrity). Most new actors (especially in big-budget films) are very rich, well-connected kids, far from ideal casting. Auditions? Who needs them. Let's do some millionaire a favour and get his kid into a movie; that might really pay off, "we might even get invited to a opulent, decadent orgy by these people!"
Alicia von Rittberg (even her name is hoity-toity) is dull, average-looking, and doesn't even have a convincing American accent. Didn't her character spend her entire life in the States? Sure, but a certain German clan must have promised the producer something-or-other in exchange for letting their daughter get this role, and that pretty much sums up the seriousness of the makers of this rubbish: zero. You can often surmise how serious/principled a film-maker is by whom they cast in lead roles. For example, if Jennifer Lopez or Ben Afleck get the lead that means there is no intent to make a good movie, just a quick cash-grab. (Ideally, the aim should be to achieve both: quality and profits. But this appears to be very rarely the case.) Or, like here, when they hire some blue-blood aristocrat kid, you automatically know that the producer and/or director is doing the "aristocracy" a favour, and getting something concrete in return, perhaps even a large sum of money to help finance the rubbish. If you care this little who gets to play the lead then by definition you never intended to make a good movie in the first place - or at the very least you have no clue what it takes to deliver a good product.
The script hardly helps. It is a heavily padded affair that boils down to a boring, unlikable character searching for her origins, and in a way that is slow, often mundane, and devoid of thrills.
This girl lies, cheats and steals - without any apparent reason, which makes her a mockery for a lead character. She doesn't want to tell the singer that she thinks she's her mother. She lies to her father about being a metal journalist. She attempts to steal a diary instead of simply ASKING her grandfather for it. She even HIDES the fact that she's in Norway from her cop foster parent, because for some reason she can't be honest with anyone, about anything. Why all the secrecy? CIA agents are less secretive than she is. So is she an idiot?
Well, she must be. Her mother is a black metal groupie and her father a black metal "musician" (and not even a drummer or a guitarist but a miserable bass-player). That in itself almost guarantees bad genes.
Any metal fans out there seeking an "in-depth" exploration of Norway's goofy metal scene should forget about it: there's almost none of that here. Fortunately, that's not why I picked the film. To the contrary, I was wary that I might find lots of cringey BM cheese. Instead, I only found boredom.
I had to smirk about how the cop who found her adopted her. That's just hilarious. The writer must have watched too many YouTube clips where guys found stray kittens and kept them. A cop finds an abandoned infant and HE of all people adopts her... Just too stupid. What a silly Disney touch.
Halfway through the film I was very close to giving up, it's that boring. The film's called LEAVE, but that only applies to cinema-goers: the proper title for people watching this on TV should be PRESS STOP. But then a very random rape scene made me smirk, so I continued. No, rape isn't funny at all, at least not when it's realistic and logical. This, however, is so silly... Even worse: a skinny dork tries to rape her (and she is quite meaty hence hardly a defenseless little girl) and predictably gets his ass served to him. He even gets seriously injured, after his head hits a cupboard after being hit by a... frying pan. She runs away from the scene instead of telling the cops what happened. Lying and cheating, yet again. Bottom-barrel writing. Of course, she would have been imprisoned by the crazy family if she had stayed, but she didn't know that then...
And that stupid plot-twist... Her mother (or her friend) being kept prisoner in a room, for decades. A satanic cult, or a Christian one... or whatever. Total rubbish, laughable. I'd lost interest in the film by then so I'm not sure what the exact revelations are. Who cares. But I do wonder why the ghost made itself useful only after so many years of inactivity: why did it not haunt the psychos who killed it? Which means the ghost is just as daft as the American girl... Two peas in a pod.
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